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COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



Tales and Trails 
^ Wakarusa 




* BY 

A. M. HARVEY 

of the Topeka Bar 



Crane 8s Company, Printers 

Topeka, Kansas 

1917 






Copyright 1917 
By Crane & Company 



DEC 27 1317 



o 



Cales; anti tIDrailg of OTafearusia 



^ Jforetfjougljt anb a Jiebication 



"A PARADOXICAL philosopher, carrying to the ut- 
Jl\ termost length that aphorism of Montesquieu's, 
'Happy the people whose annals are tiresome,' has said ; 
'Happy the people whose annals are vacant.' In which 
saying, mad as it looks, may there not still be found some 
grain of reason? For truly, as it has been written, 'Si- 
lence is divine,' and of Heaven ; so in all earthly things, 
too, there is a silence which is better than any speech. 
Consider it well, the Event, the thing which can be 
spoken of and recorded ; is it not in all cases some dis- 
ruption, some solution of continuity? Were it even a 
glad Event, it involves change, involves loss (of active 
force) ; and so far, either in the past or in the present, 
is an irregularity, a disease. Stillest perseverance were 
our blessedness — not dislocation and alteration — could 
they be avoided. 

"The oak grows silently in the forest a thousand 
years; only in the thousandth year, when the wood- 
man arrives with his ax, is there heard an echoing 
through the solitudes; and the oak announces itself 
when, with far-sounding crash, it falls. How silent, 
too, was the planting of the acorn, scattered from the 
lap of some wandering wind! Nay, when our oak 
flowered, or put on its leaves (its glad Events), what 

[Page 6 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



shout of proclamation could there be? Hardly from 
the most observant a word of recognition. These 
things befell not, they were slowly done; not in an 
hour, but through the flight of days : what was to be 
said of it? This hour seemed altogether as the last 
was, as the next would be. 

"It is thus everywhere that foolish Rumor babbles 
not of what was done, but of what was misdone or 
undone; and foolish History (ever, more or less, the 
written epitomized synopsis of Rumor) knows so little 
that were not as well unknown. Attila Invasions, 
Walter-the-Penniless Crusades, Sicilian Vespers, Thir- 
ty-Years' Wars : mere sin and misery ; not work, but 
hindrance of work! For the Earth all this while was 
yearly green and yellow with her kind harvests ; the 
hand of the craftsman, the mind of the thinker, rested 
not ; and so, after all and in spite of all, we have this 
so glorious high-domed blossoming World ; concerning 
which poor History may well ask with wonder. Whence 
it came? She knows so little of it, knows so much of 
what obstructed it, what would have rendered it im- 
possible. Such, nevertheless, by necessity or foolish 
choice, is her rule and practice ; whereby that paradox, 
* Happy the people whose annals are vacant,' is not 
without its true side." — Carlyle. 

This book of tales and trails of people whose 
annals are vacant, because they were peaceful 
and happy, is dedicated to the nineteen-year- 

Page 6] 



A Foreilwught and a Dedication 

old soldier boys of 1917 and to their comrades ; 
and especially to that nineteen-year-old sol- 
dier, Randal Cone Harvey, whose image and 
whose service is with us by day and by night. 
May their service help bring to a war-cursed 
world such peace that the annals of all men 
will be stories of love, companionship and as- 
sociation one with another. 

A. M. Harvey. 



[Page'^ 



Contents 

Page 

Title 1 

Forethought and Dedication 5 

The Trail of the Sac and Fox 13 

The Stone Bridge 17 

The Newcomers 21 

An Old-Timer 27 

Mother Newcomer 35 

John MacDonald 43 

Jake Self 49 

The Yankee and His Hog — and Other Troubles . .. 55 

The Trail That Never Was Traveled 59 

The Conversion of Cartmill 63 

A Fourth of July Speech 75 

The Phantom Fisherman, and Other Ghosts 81 

An Indian Christmas 93 



[Page 9 



i;alesi anti tEvnii^ of OTafearusa 



^l)t tCrail of tfje ^ac anb Jf ox 



IT WAS during the '40's that the Sac and Fox 
Indians started on their long journey to 
take up their home in the land provided for 
them in Kansas, being a portion of the present 
counties of Lyon, Osage, and Franklin. In the 
year 1846 a large number of them had camped 
in the Kansas River Valley near the present 
site of Topeka, and because of their friendship 
with the Shawnees they were permitted to 
remain there for some time before moving on. 
Many of them formed attachments and friend- 
ships among the Shawnees and Pottawato- 
mies, and remained with them. After the main 
body of the Sac and Fox moved on to their 
own lands, their associations with the Shaw- 
nees and other friendly Indians were such that 
there was much travel back and forth. 

The trails leading south from the Kansas 
River Valley all fell into the "Oregon" or 
'* California" road, and along that the Indians 
traveled to the trading village of Carthage, a 

[Page 13 



Tales and Trails of Waharusa 



few miles northeast of the present village of 
Berry ton. From there, several trails set off 
toward the Sac and Fox lands. One of the 
principal trails wound over the hills and down 
through a long ravine to the Wakarusa Val- 
ley, and across that river at the ford where 
the great stone bridge now stands, due south 
of Berryton ; and from there it wound around 
the hill through the woods and again over the 
plains. Afterwards a public road was laid 
out upon this trail, called, in the Shawnee 
County records, the ''Sac and Fox Road," but 
usually spoken of as the " Ottawa State Road." 
Just south of the Wakarusa crossing and a 
few hundred yards around the brow of the 
hill, there lies a parcel of level ground, which 
was an ideal place for camping. It is now 
occupied by the public road, and church and 
school-house grounds. This was a famous 
camping place for the Sac and Fox and all 
other Indians who used the trail. If you step 
up to the stone fence just east of the school- 
house, looking over you will notice a deep 
ditch washed out down the creek bank, on the 
side of which a large oak tree stands, with 



Page U] 



The Trail of the Sac and Fox 



many of its roots exposed. This ditch marks 
the path first used by the Indians as they 
went back and forth from the camping ground 
to the spring of sweet, beautiful water that 
flows from out the rocks at the foot of the 
hill. 

Modern history of this portion of the valley 
begins with this camping place. It was not 
only a resting place, but a place where con- 
sultations and conferences were held, and 
where the eloquent ones told of the glory of 
Black Hawk, the wisdom of Keokuk, and the 
splendid history of their tribe. It was said 
that the older men were despondent, but that 
the younger men thought that there was a 
possibility of rebuilding their tribal fortunes 
in the new country, and that some day they 
would be as powerful and as prosperous as 
they had hoped to be in Iowa and upon other 
lands belonging to them. 

But the Sac and Fox are gone; the trail 
knows them no more ; the sweet waters still 
flow from the beautiful spring, and a white 
man who never knew them has built a house 
near by on the bluff by the side of the road. 

[Page 15 



THE Indian trail had given away and had 
gradually become merged into a public 
road, here and there forced back to section 
lines, but in the main sustaining its diagonal 
course across the country and being known as 
the Topeka and Ottawa State Road. 

Jacob Welchans was not only an extraordi- 
narily fine surveyor, whose corner-stones and 
monuments are now and always will be rec- 
ognized in Shawnee County as the best evi- 
dence of the location of land boundaries, but 
he also engaged in country school-teaching, 
and a number of times taught in the little 
school-house established near the Wakarusa 
River and by the old Sac and Fox spring. The 
ford across the Wakarusa at this point was 
not an extra good one. The bottom was rock, 
but there was a steep hill on one side and a 
low, springy place on the other ; and, except- 
ing times when the stream was very low, the 
water was of considerable depth over the ford- 

[Page 17 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



ing place, and it was not an uncommon sight 
to see a farmer's boy on an old gray mare 
fording children across in the morning and in 
the afternoon, so that they could go to and 
from school. 

This was long before city men commenced 
buying up farm land, and therefore the Wa- 
karusa Valley was quite well populated, and 
the little school boasted an attendance of from 
fifty to sixty children during the entire school 
year. Jacob Welchans became ambitious that 
there should be a bridge across the Wakarusa 
at that point, not only for the benefit of the 
school children and the neighborhood gener- 
ally, but because that was the fording place 
for the travel that fell into the Topeka and 
Ottawa State Road. He called attention of 
the county ofiicers to the importance of the 
road to the city of Topeka and to the county 
of Shawnee, and by sheer force of character 
he impressed upon them the conviction that a 
bridge should be erected at the place indi- 
cated, and that it should be a stone bridge 
builded from bed rock, and to stay. 

The usual formalities were indulged in, 

Page 18] 



The Stone Bridge 



and the contract was let to George Evans, 
who commenced the work in the summer of 
1878, and when the school commenced in Oc- 
tober the bridge was in course of construction. 
It was a great time for the neighborhood and 
for the school children, who spent much of 
their intermission periods around the work 
and the workmen. Some of the workmen 
were negroes who talked French, and they 
were a lot of fun. They camped at different 
places around near the spring, boiled their 
coffee in old tomato cans, slept on the ground, 
hunted squirrels and rabbits between working 
hours, and in many other ways exhibited in- 
teresting activities, to the delight of the 
youngsters. After one arch of the bridge was 
up and the false work had been taken out, it 
commenced to crack and fold and double, and 
then fell. The school children had just ar- 
rived on the scene after being dismissed at 
recess, and it seemed for all the world as 
though the arch had fallen down to give them 
the benefit of the crash and the excitement. 
No one was hurt, and the wreck was soon 
cleared away, so that the work could go on. 



[Page 19 



Tales and Trails of Waharusa 



The bridge was finished in due time, and for 
nearly forty years it has justified the faith of 
those who planned and constructed it. Once, 
after an extraordinary flood that filled the 
waterways almost to the top, Jim Baker said : 
"She is a mighty good makeshift in time of 
high water; no tin bridge for me." It not 
only served the purpose of travel, but it has 
become a landmark in southern Shawnee 
County, and it always will be a monument to 
the old trail and to the wisdom and foresight 
of Jacob Welchans and the other county of- 
ficers who were responsible for its being con- 
structed. 



Page 



^Ije i^etocomerg 



ONE November day in 1877 the New- 
comers unloaded from a Santa Fe train 
just then arrived in the city of Topeka, the ex- 
act time being about four o'clock in the after- 
noon. There was Mother Newcomer and five 
boys, the oldest being less than five years older 
than the youngest. On the platform they met 
Father Newcomer, who, together with a 
country lad, was awaiting the arrival. They 
gathered their baggage together, and the 
country boy led the way across the street to 
where his team, hitched to a farm wagon, was 
tied. Each of the horses was fastened with a 
heavy rope about the neck, which was looped 
over his nose and tied fast to a post, and each 
of them jumped and snorted and pulled at 
every movement or noise made by the train, 
which was still upon the track. 

The train pulled out, the Newcomers loaded 
up, the boy managed to quiet down the horses, 
and untied one after the other, holding the 

[Page 21 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



lines in his hand all the time; and after he 
had tied up the last rope, he jumped into the 
front of the wagon bed, holding fast to the 
lines or reins, and up the street they went. 
After a brief stop at Cole's grocery, and again 
at Manspeaker's, they started out over the 
diagonal road leading to the southeast from 
the city. At the top of the Highland Park 
hill they looked back and saw Topeka in the 
valley, and it looked like a cluster of brick 
houses, with scarcely a tree in sight ; and yet 
it was beautiful in the glancing rays of the 
setting sun, and all of them felt that it was to 
be the center of that country which was their 
new home and the place of their future ac- 
tivity. 

Before it was fully dark the farm wagon 
had covered the distance of some fourteen 
miles from the city, traveling nearly all the 
way in a diagonal, southeasterly direction, 
and had wound up at the home of WiUiam 
Matney, on Lynn Creek, a mile below Tevis. 
The ride was a wonderful experience for the 
little Newcomers. They soon learned that 
one of the horses was named Greeley and the 



Page 22] 



The Newcomers 



other Banks ; but it was some years before 
they understood that these names indicated 
that the owner was a Democrat who knew the 
names of the candidates upon his ticket some 
five years before, when the horses were colts. 
The autumn sky was beautiful, and the light 
frosts had given a brown tinge to the prairie, 
and it seemed to them that every breath of 
air was a draught of the elixir of life. 

That evening dozens of persons from ten 
miles around called at the Matney home to 
welcome and visit with the Newcomers. They 
were nearly all old-timers, and they repre- 
sented former inhabitants of at least seven of 
the States of the United States and three for- 
eign countries. There was a Yankee from 
Maine, a Digger from the hills of North Caro- 
lina, a Mudsucker from Illinois, and all kinds 
of Corncrackers from Kentucky, besides a 
fine old Englishman and a sturdy German; 
and they told the Newcomer boys that the 
school-teacher was a Scotchman who talked 
through his nose and said lots of funny things, 
and that further up the creek lived a Manx- 
man by the name of Quayle. It seems that 



[Page 23 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



Kansas had gathered these people from many 
corners of the earth, to the end that they might 
be blended into a new people with a new spirit 
that should mark the character of a new State. 

The Newcomers did not know that they 
were newcomers for some days, nor until they 
heard people calling them by that name. One 
day one of the boys rode with John Oliver to 
Carbondale; and as Oliver pulled up to the 
sidewalk in front of a store, someone called 
out, ''John, where did you get that kid.^" 
And John answered, ''He belongs to a new- 
comer just moved on the crick. He's got a 
whole passel of 'em. I seed this 'un in the 
road and fetched him along." John Oliver 
was from Tennessee, and he had his own pe- 
culiar way of expressing himself. He was a 
lot of fun for the Yankee neighbor. 

The Newcomers were soon settled in a 
house of their own near the present site of the 
stone bridge, and every day of that glorious 
fall and winter was a day of enjoyment to 
them ; and over and over, as they gathered 
around the big fireplace of an evening, they 
rejoiced together because of the glorious wel- 

Page U] 



The Newcomers 



come that Kansas had given them, and of the 
more glorious welcome, if possible, that had 
been given to them by the people of Kansas — 
old and newcomers — from so many different 
lands, with so many different ideas and so 
many different ways and habits, yet all filled 
with that exaltation which came to them like 
a breath of freedom from the prairie, and has 
made them and others like them into a new 
race, filled with a new^ spirit, which we call 
Kansas. 



[Page 25 



^n ©Ih-Kimtv 



DURING the midsummer of 1854, James 
Lynn and William Lynn started across 
the prairies from Westport, Missouri, to find 
homes in Kansas. With a stalwart pair of 
oxen yoked to a heavy wagon they proceeded 
slowly but surely westward, and finally, fol- 
lowing up the Wakarusa Valley and out along 
one of its tributaries, they camped one night 
after a blistering hot August day near a spring 
that flowed from among a pile of stones and 
boulders that had been deposited at that 
point in great abundance by some glacier that 
must have covered this part of Kansas cen- 
turies ago. The flowing spring reminded them 
of Kentucky, and they concluded that then 
and there one of them had found a home. 
James Lynn drove his stake into the ground 
and said that it was his. Afterwards they 
traveled further up the little stream and lo- 
cated another claim, and William Lynn 
marked it and claimed it for his own. The 

[Page S7 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



location of these two settlements caused the 
little stream to be named Lynn Creek, and so 
it is known from the hills among which it 
rises on through Berryton, Tevis, and into 
Wakarusa near Richland. 

The hardships of pioneer life were too much 
for James Lynn, and he died within a few 
years after their settlement ; but William Lynn 
weathered the storm and lived upon the land 
thus picked out by him on that August day 
until his death, which occurred in February, 
1908. At the time of his death he had lived 
in Kansas nearly fifty-four years, and he was 
then one hundred and two years old. When 
it was found that he was dead, one of his sons 
called one of the Newcomer boys, who then 
lived in Topeka, over the phone and said : 
"Pap is dead. You know he never was much 
as to churches, and we just thought that we 
would ask you to come out and say something 
at his funeral." 

And, of course, the Newcomer boy said that 
he would ; and on the day appointed he drove 
out to the old Lynn home, and among the 
neighbors and friends gathered around he 



Page 28] 



An Old-Timer 



stood by the coffin of this old-timer and 
looked down upon his face, which resembled 
a hickory nut worn and preserved with age, 
and in part he said : 

*'One October day in about the year 1837, in Madi- 
son County, Kentucky, a small boy, the oldest son of 
a widowed mother, had set himself to work trying to 
split clapboards to make a shelter for some stock that 
belonged to his mother. He was working hard and 
making slow progress, when a stahvart young man 
came along on his way to his own duties of the day. 
The young man stopped, spoke kindly to him, and 
commenced helping with the work. What had prom- 
ised to be a day of toil became a day of pleasure, and 
when the sun sank low in the west on that day, the 
boards had been made and the shelter erected, and 
the boy and man were happy — the one scarcely more 
happy than the other. That boy was my father ; and 
that young man, who was his friend from the begin- 
ning, was none other than the grand old man whose 
lifeless body lies before us today. 

'*With the recollection of the story of this act of 
simple kindness in my mind, the request was to me a 
command when the family communicated to me their 
desire that I should speak at this funeral. 

"The span of this life was so great and covered so 
many years that you and I can hardly realize the length 
of it. He was old enough to remember the stirring 

[Page 29 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



times of the battle of New Orleans. He was a man 
grown when the Kentucky soldiers came marching 
home victorious from the war with Mexico, and when 
the Kentucky dead were brought home from Buena 
Vista's battlefield and all Kentucky stood in mourning 
as O'Hara read his immortal poem, commencing : 

" 'The muffled drum's sad roll has beat the soldier's last tattoo. 
No more on life's parade shall meet that brave and fallen few ; 
On Fame's eternal camping ground their silent tents are spread. 
And Glory guards with solemn round the bivouac of the dead. ' 

"When the civil war came on he was old enough 
that his sons became soldiers in the army. When I 
first knew him — more than thirty years ago — he was 
strong and rugged, but an old man. 

"As you and I have now gathered to say the last 
word and do the last service for this old friend, I feel 
that we are standing on sacred ground. We realize 
that we are today confronted by the two great mys- 
teries — one of life and the other of death. Life — that 
preserved in this man a constitutional strength that 
kings would give millions to possess, that coursed the 
red blood through his veins, and that made his right 
arm strong as an iron shaft for more than three-quarters 
of a century — is indeed a mystery ; but Death — that 
stopped the flowing blood and rested the tired limbs — 
is a greater mystery. And, strange to say, at a time 
like this, when these two mysteries seem closer and 
more oppressive, we are met with the brightest, best 
and greatest hope of the human race — the hope of im- 



Page 



An Old- Timer 



mortality, of life that will endure forever, a hope that 
belongs to every man, of every religion, of every race, 
under every sun. Death waited long and patiently for 
him. With muffled oar he guarded close the nearer 
shore of the silent river. Many of his friends came 
down and crossed the river, and finally he came. It is 
easy for me to believe that on the other shore he saw a 
familiar face, and that a friendly hand and a strong 
arm were joined to his to help him up the other bank, 
as he had helped his friend on this side. And so I say 
that we stand today on sacred ground as we are brought 
to a contemplation of the solemn fact that the sun is 
set and the day is done for one who used to walk up- 
right among us. 

"He saw the red man give place to the white man, 
and he saw the buffalo herds melt away that domestic 
animals might take their place. He heard the shriek 
of the first locomotive that trundled its way over the 
line of the great railway that traverses this part of the 
county. And he saw the first break of virgin soil when 
men commenced to build our splendid Capitol. 

"His native State had been called 'the dark and 
bloody ground.' Indian tribes had struggled for the 
possession of its hunting grounds, and had fought and 
killed and waged their wars until they said the ground 
was dark and bloody. And, strange to say, these same 
hunting grounds became scenes of conflict, bloodshed 
and war long after the white man had taken them. 
In that State were honest, industrious, hospitable men 

[Page 31 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



and women ; but human life was cheap, and every- 
where men were ready at all times to fight and die for 
what they thought was right. It was the dark and 
bloody ground. It was a strange fate that took this 
pioneer from Kentucky and gave him a home in Kansas, 
which was soon to become the battle ground of the 
first conflict between slavery and freedom, and in truth 
the dark and bloody ground of the West. 

"He lived to see the end of this quarrel. He had 
known Kansas when she was bleeding and torn, and 
then had seen her rise, beautiful, strong, and without a 
wound. He had experienced the horrors of war and 
murder, but lived to know that peace possessed the 
State. 

"His education was limited, his life was humble, and 
he knew not ambition. You and I may learn a lesson 
from the fact that the great Giver of Life gave to this 
humble man all of this experience and all of this con- 
tact with human affairs, and a full round century of 
life in this strange old world. It is written that certain 
things are withheld from the wise and prudent and re- 
vealed unto babes, and who can say that this life has 
not fulfilled a great purpose. Here is a man who lived 
a long, industrious life and never knew the greed, av- 
arice and crime that comes with the modern struggle 
for money. Political strife was to him a closed book. 
He knew nothing of the great paintings of the great 
masters in art, but he had seen Nature in her beauty 
and grandeur, and it was more beautiful than any 



Page 



An Old-Timer 



painting made by man. He had seen the sunrise in a 
thousand forms, and the Storm King had builded 
mountains of black and gold for him. And the great 
prairies and the stalwart forests had made pictures for 
him. He knew what beauty was. 

'*The story told at the beginning of this talk is only 
illustrative of his kindness of heart. No person was 
too poor or despised to enlist his sympathy and help in 
time of trouble. 

"He knew little of creeds and thought little of doc- 
trines, and yet his life was fashioned after that simple 
plan given to mankind by the great Teacher who sat 
down with publicans and sinners and rebuked hypocrisy 
wherever it was found. 

"This is but a brief memorial to the life and char- 
acter of William Lynn. His work is done. Although he 
lived far bej^ond the allotted time for man, his death 
has come as a tragedy to his family and friends. Com- 
fort is gathered from the fact that his life was one of 
service. Service in the building of his country and his 
State, service to his family, and service to his fellow- 
man. No honest effort is ever lost. Service — honest 
and faithful — has a force and influence that will live 
forever. We can understand that the name of this 
man will be perpetuated because his service in building 
a home along this little watercourse has caused it to 
be named 'Lynn Creek,' and that his name has been 
given to a school-house and to a church and to a politi- 
cal division of a township, and yet every other deed of 



[Page 33 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



honest service from the beginning to the end of his 
long and useful life will live and share in framing the 
lives, conduct and destiny of those who follow him so 
long as time shall last." 



Page 3\ 



iWotfjer i^etocomer 



MOTHER NEWCOMER certainly en- 
joyed Kansas, and she soon became as 
well known as an old-timer. At home she was 
the cook and the baker and the dressmaker and 
the tailor, besides doing a part of all other work 
about the place. She knew where the best 
greens could be picked in early spring, and the 
best berries in the summer, and she either 
made the boys pick them or she took her 
snake-killing dog with her and picked them 
herself; and all through the year she was a 
part of all the activities of the home ; and she 
enjoyed it all. 

When a babe was to be born anywhere for 
miles around, she was there. Sometimes she 
was the lone attendant, and again she helped 
Dr. Taylor, who had been in the valley from 
the beginning; and more than once she 
worked with some young doctor who was so 
panicky because the baby didn't hurry that 
she would have to tell him to keep his feet on 

[Page 35 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



the ground, and that milHons of babies had 
been born before a doctor or a medical college 
had ever been discovered. One night at mid- 
night she waked up one of the boys, and told 
him that his father was out saddling the pony, 
and that he must go for Dr. Woods, who lived 
about five miles to the w^est. The boy finally 
wakened up and got his clothes on, and found 
that she was just ready to leave with a neigh- 
bor for his home, and that someone must go 
for the doctor. The pony had been saddled 
by that time, and was tied with a heavy rope 
to a tree near the door. The boy put on 
plenty of clothes and then mounted the pony, 
while his father held the little beast to keep 
him from standing on his head. The father 
pointed to the seven stars then showing up in 
the southern sky and told the boy to keep 
them to his left and to ride until he had 
crossed the railroad, and then go up to the 
first house and yell until someone came out so 
that he could inquire for the home of Dr. 
Woods. The directions being given, the pony 
was untied and turned loose, with the end of 
the rope fastened to the horn of the saddle. 



Page 36] 



Mother Newcomer 



Of course the pony ran off for about a mile, 
but the boy kept him headed in the right 
direction, and after a while he slowed down and 
made the journey in good shape. When Dr. 
Woods was roused he made the boy come in 
and get warm while he got his horse, and to- 
gether they rode back, and long before day 
the doctor had joined Mother Newcomer at 
the neighbor's house. 

Dr. Taylor still lives at his old home about 
three miles north of the stone bridge. He is 
a fine type of the pioneer doctor, and he not 
only knows the books, but he knows men and 
women, and especially Kansas men and 
women ; and more than that, he knows Kan- 
sas and its climate, its tricks, and its good 
moods and its bad ones. For nearly fifty 
years he has ministered to the sick and the 
afflicted, and those who thought they were 
sick or afflicted, along the roads and trails of 
Wakarusa; and none could do it better or 
more faithfully. Doctor Woods was of the 
same type. He always traveled horseback, 
usually riding a large, strong, rough horse; 



{Page 37 



Tales and Trails of Waharusa 



and he knew the bridle-paths, and where to 
ford the streams. 

She was always interested in the school, 
and one of the first things that attracted her 
special attention was the fact that only four 
months of school was provided for in the year. 
She started an agitation for a longer term, 
and in the midst of it the word came through 
the country that either by a statute or a de- 
cision of the Supreme Court women were al- 
lowed to vote at school elections ; and there- 
fore upon school-meeting day she had one of 
the boys hitch a team to the farm wagon and 
they drove round and gathered up and took 
six women to the school meeting. They 
proved to be the balance of power, and a new 
director was elected, and a vote was carried 
for nine months school and for a levy large 
enough to pay a good teacher. The records 
show that from that day to this the old dis- 
trict has never been disgraced with a short 
term, nor meager provisions for school sup- 
port. 

With all her activities, her best and greatest 
service was in her tender, sympathetic help- 



Page 38] 



Mother Newcomer 



fulness and cooperation with her husband and 
children. There never was a day so dark but 
that she was full of good cheer and comfort. 
One terrible August day a hot v^ind blew 
across the State like a blast from Hell ; leaves 
that were green in the morning could be 
burned with a match at noon ; and the crops 
in every field seemed doomed for destruction. 
When the men came in at midday they were 
sorely discouraged, but they found a splendid 
dinner on the table, the floor scrubbed to 
make the room cool, and the blinds down 
toward the south ; and Mother Newcomer, 
with a clean apron and cheerful face, sitting 
at the end of the table, almost made them 
forget the terrible hurricane of heat that was 
being driven across the country. During the 
meal some of them spoke of their discourage- 
ment, but she was full of plans as to how they 
might pull through ; and when some said 
there would be no corn and no feed, she in- 
sisted that there would be a harvest of some 
kind. In keeping with a custom of hers, she 
enforced her views by a quotation : *' Summer 
and winter, seed time and harvest, shall not 

[Page 39 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



fail so long as time shall last." From this she 
argued that there was sure to be a harvest, 
and they all went out with better cheer. And 
indeed there was some harvest, and they were 
able to hold on for another year. 

Years afterwards, she wrote all the boys 
who were away from home and asked them 
to be there Thanksgiving Day ; and they were 
there. No one believed that it would be the 
last time they were all to be together ; but 
all during the day there was a feeling of ten- 
derness about the occasion ; and it was the 
last time. 

That day as they all sat about the great 
table and talked of their experiences in the 
new country, and one told of this adventure 
or this experience or another, j&nally one of 
the boys voiced the sentiment of all the others 
when he said: "In making this home here. 
Mother has done more than all the rest." On 
that same day she repeated another familiar 
quotation of hers, which the boys have al- 
ways remembered : "I have been young and 
now I am old, and I have not seen the right- 
eous forsaken nor his seed begging bread;" 



Page Jfi] 



Mother Newcomer 



and she said: "Do right as you understand 
and beheve the right to be and you will be 
righteous, and have peace, and the promise 
will be yours." 



[PageU 



f ofjn iWacBonalb 

A SCOTCH lad who appeared to be scarcely 
out of his teens came to the neighborhood 
one October day and was soon employed as a 
farm hand. This employment did not last 
long, because the school ma'am got married, 
and he made application and was selected as 
the teacher in the district school. George 
Franks looked him over and said: *' There's 
one thing certain. He's not hable to get mar- 
ried before the term is over." 

He was certainly an awkward lad, and his 
pecuHar brogue as well as the unusual phrase- 
ology employed by him was a source of extra- 
ordinary amusement and entertainment to 
everyone. Of course, he was welcomed and 
made at home, just as every stranger was, 
and good-natured frontier manners prevented 
fun being made of him to his face. However, 
and notwithstanding the best that could be 
done, it was not unusual for a company of 
young folks to get around him and ask him 

[Page h3 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



questions, and they frequently burst into 
laughter over his quaint expressions. It em- 
barrassed him very much at the time ; and in 
his later years he often said that he some- 
times blushed even then to think of what he 
had said and how the young folks laughed at 
him. Purely as a matter of self-defense, he 
developed the habit of saying things to make 
folks laugh ; and, having an active, ingenious 
mind, he soon developed into a humorist, 
and this characteristic obtained with him dur- 
ing all his life. 

He became one of the fixtures in the com- 
munity, and not only taught the Berry Creek 
school, but nearly every other school for a 
number of miles around. Although he was a 
thorough Scotchman, raised with all the strict- 
ness which his hardy people and the Presby- 
terian faith provided, he was known among 
school children as "John Easy" ; and it is to 
be recorded that during the many years that 
he was a Wakarusa Valley school teacher he 
never struck a pupil nor laid violent hands on 
one. How he managed to get along without 
doing so is still a marvel to the old-timers in 



Page U\ 



John MacDonald 



the neighborhood. It was probably because 
of the fact that he was a continuous and ardent 
student himself, always having on hand, in 
addition to school work, one or more scientific 
or literary studies which he pursued, and the 
youngsters caught the spirit from him, and on 
this account were not hard to manage. It 
can be truly said of him that by his conduct, 
his life, and his teachings, he coaxed and led 
the way of his pupils to higher education and 
to better things. Again, the idea that he was 
liable to say something that would make you 
laugh possessed the children as well as the 
grown folks, and he knew it, and frequently 
used his ability as a humorist to keep atten- 
tion to himself and to the work the pupils had 
in hand. One day, during a drill in history, 
he pointed to a lad from the most outspoken 
Democratic family in the vicinity, and said, 
*'You write the names of all the Republican 
Presidents on the blackboard." The way he 
said it caused a lot of merriment. The boy 
stepped to the board and wrote the full list, 
and, after the last name he wrote, "The last 
of that bright band." Every one watched the 



[Page ^5 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



teacher when he looked over the work. He 
said not a word, but took a piece of chalk and 
wrote like he was digging into the board, 
"Do you think so?" 

To close friends he would confess that he 
loved the taste of every intoxicating liquor 
(and in his native land among those surround- 
ing him it was a common practice for nearly 
everyone to use strong drink of some char- 
acter), yet he never drank, and he was among 
the first to advocate and work for the de- 
struction of the liquor traffic in Kansas. 

His splendid work as a teacher made him 
friends and acquaintances throughout the 
county, and in course of time he was elected 
County Superintendent, which position he 
held for many years. It was his custom as 
Superintendent to go on foot when visiting 
the different schools of the county, and he 
knew every trail and bridle-path. It was a 
treat to the pupils and teacher to have him 
come shpping in at the door, after which he 
would take off his wraps and **loaf around," 
as he called it. He always left something in 
the way of help to those who were trying to 

Page 46] 



John MacDonald 



learn. His life along the trails of Wakarusa 
was a tour of usefulness, and he had the con- 
fidence of everyone, from the most well-to-do 
to the poorest ; and from the most respected 
to the worthless. 

As years went by he married and com- 
menced the establishment of a home on a 
farm purchased and owned by him. He mixed 
newspaper and educational work with his 
farming, and this took him away from home 
much of the time. One day he returned after 
a short absence and found his home desolated. 
It is enough to say that it was the consuming 
tragedy of his life, and it left him alone among 
men. Very few aside from his country neigh- 
bors ever knew of his trouble. Years went 
by, and honors came to him in educational 
work, not only in the State but throughout 
the United States and the world ; and his old 
neighbors on Wakarusa often thought of him 
and sympathized with him and had heartaches 
for him, because they knew how he suffered ; 
and he knew that they knew, and they knew 
that he knew that they knew. 

It was some years after MacDonald had left 

[Page Iff 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



the farm that one of the Berry Creek school- 
boys, having grown to young manhood, was 
about to leave home for service as a soldier. 
His days were full of things to do, and he did 
not take time to hunt up old friends to say 
good-bye, but early in the morning of the day 
he was to go he met MacDonald on the side- 
walk near his home. He was waiting for the 
young man, and he took him by the hand and 
looked at him as he often looked at him as a 
boy, and said, "I shall think of you often. 
God bless you. Good-bye." The beautiful 
May morning, with the sun just breaking 
''over the top," was something to remember, 
but the earnest man and his eloquent words 
of farewell were burned into the mind and 
heart of the younger man, and they gave him 
strength and courage. 

Such was John MacDonald. 



Page -4S] 



f afee ^elf 

ON A SLAB in the Ridgeway graveyard 
there is this inscription : "Jacob W. Self. 
Died January 27, 1873." 

Jake Self was forty -nine years old when he 
died, and he had been a pioneer and a plains- 
man since his boyhood. He lived on the old 
Berry farm near the stone bridge. On the 
morning of the day of his death he, together 
with Wash Townsend and S. A. Sprague, went 
on horseback to Carbondale. Carbondale was 
then a thriving little village, with a few stores, 
a blacksmith shop, and about a dozen saloons. 
It was a warm day for winter, and the roads 
were muddy and sloppy. Late in the after- 
noon Self and his companions mounted their 
horses and started for home. They noticed 
that the wind had commenced to blow from 
the north and was quite cold, and that the 
ground cracked and broke under the horses' 
feet on account of the frozen crust that then 
covered it. As they left the village, riding 

[Page h9 



Tales and Trails of Waharusa 



briskly toward the northeast, they discovered 
that clouds had overcast the sky, and that 
low in the northwest they were heavy, and 
had that liquid-black appearance that settlers 
described as inky. The breeze from the north- 
west soon developed into a strong wind, with 
an occasional bit of snow, and it became 
colder and colder. By the time they reached 
the upper crossing of Berry Creek the air was 
full of snow, dry, hard, and driven fiercely by 
the wind. The men were suffering from the 
intense cold, and Townsend suggested that 
they take the creek road, which followed the 
lowland from that point to their home, but 
Self, who was riding a wild and spirited horse, 
insisted that he would ride across the prairie, 
and when the others separated from him, he 
called back that he would beat them home. 
He rode at a gallop by the Elliott school-house. 
John MacDonald, the teacher, stood in the 
door and watched him, and meditated upon 
his recklessness and upon the curse of strong 
drink, for he sat his horse as one who had 
been drinking and was full of power there- 
from, though not intoxicated. Sprague and 



Page 50] 



Jake Self 



Townsend followed the course taken by them, 
and arrived at the farm shortly after dark, but 
Self was not there. They waited an hour, 
then another, and becoming alarmed con- 
cluded that Self had lost his way and that 
they would go out and try to find him. By 
this time the storm had become a frightful 
blizzard, the temperature far below zero, and 
the snow and wind driving like a hurricane. 
The two men rode westward onto the prairie, 
and as nearly as they could, they followed the 
road which they had expected Self to take. 
On account of the darkness and the storm, it 
became necessary for them to tie their horses 
together to prevent their being separated, and 
in this way they rode for an hour or more, 
and then concluded to give up the search and 
return home. They rode rapidly, and sud- 
denly plunged into a deep ravine, which in- 
dicated to them that they were going in the 
wrong direction, and then they realized that 
they were lost and unable to agree on the 
direction they should take to reach home. 
Sprague suggested to Townsend that since 
the storm was coming from the northwest 

[Page 51 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



they might ride directly in the teeth of it and 
finally reach the Wakarusa bottom, and that 
then they could follow the stream downward 
to the farm. They adopted this plan, and 
after considerable difficulty reached the low 
wooded land along the stream at a point near 
where the Santa Fe Railroad now crosses the 
valley, and about one o'clock they were home. 
Each of them was frozen about the face, hands 
and feet. Self was not there. 

They stayed up all night looking for him, 
and about four o'clock in the morning his 
horse came galloping home without him. 
Early in the morning, they, together with a 
party of neighbors, went out upon the prairie, 
and at a point about two miles from the 
farm they found his body completely frozen, 
crouched in the snow. The beaten snow near 
the body indicated that the horse had stood 
near him for a long time after he had fallen. 
A full pint of whiskey was in his pocket. 
Some said that he should have drunk more 
when he felt the whiskey die out of him and 
the cold come in ; but one of them crushed 



Page 52] 



Jake Self 



the bottle on a wagon wheel, and they took 
the body home. 

It was afterwards learned that he had rid- 
den up to one farm house three times and in- 
quired the way home, and each time started 
off in the wrong direction. He had lost the 
sense of direction and was tempest tossed, 
like a ship in mid-ocean without a pilot. 

The next day three sturdy men started for 
Topeka with a heavy team and wagon, and 
shovels to be used in getting through the 
snow-drifts. They were going for a coffin for 
Jake Self, and it took hard work for almost 
the entire day before they reached the city. 

And so Jake Self died, January 27, 1873, 
as indicated upon the marble slab. 



[Page 53 



^Ije ianfeee anb ^is ^og— anb ©tljer 



MARCUS DOYEN came straight from 
the heart of Maine to Wakarusa. His 
family consisted of himself and wife and an old 
mother who had made the journey with them. 
It did not take him long to provide comfort- 
able habitations for himself and one horse and 
a cow, and he interested everyone by the in- 
genuity with which he constructed his build- 
ings, so tight that even the Kansas wind 
could not blow through them, and as though 
he were calculating on the same kind of tem- 
perature during winter time that his home 
State produced. 

He looked about him and got acquainted 
with his neighbors, and soon concluded that 
he should buy a hog to fatten up for the 
small amount of pork and lard that his family 
would need. Big Aaron Coberly sold him a 
fine, husky pig, and when he delivered him 
he found that the Yankee had made a good 

[Page 55 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



pen for him, not very big, but stout, and with 
a warm bed fixed in one corner that was well 
sheltered. A few days afterwards, one of the 
neighbors came by, and Doyen called him 
over to see his hog, and said : 

''He's surely got the right name, because 
he eats more than the horse and cow both. 
By George, he is a perfect hog ; and he hasn't 
any sense about his bed ; has picked up 
every straw and carried it over to the other 
corner of his pen, and keeps it there. He's 
also making trouble by digging into the 
ground with his nose, and has one hole where 
he's dug so deep that he nearly stands on his 
head when he's working in it." 

The neighbor advised him to cut the hog's 
nose in slashes or put rings in it, but told him 
that the more of a hog the hog made of him- 
self, the better hog he would be. The Yankee 
scratched his head as he received this advice, 
and said nothing ; but a few days afterwards 
the neighbor was going near his place and 
heard a terrible squealing, and went over and 
found the Yankee hanging onto the fence of 
the pig pen with a hoe in his hand, and he 

Page 56] 



The Yankee and His Hog 



noticed that the hog's face was covered with 
blood where the Yankee had been trying to 
slash his nose with the hoe ground sharp as a 
razor. When the neighbor stopped to observe 
the proceedings, Doyen told him that this hog 
was the trial of his life ; that he hated to cut 
his nose, but had finally concluded he must 
do so, and that he couldn't throw him down 
and handle him himself, so he had sharpened 
up his hoe and was trying to fix him so he 
couldn't dig in the ground. Resting on the 
hoe for a minute, the Yankee said : 

*'He's one of my troubles, sure enough; 
but we've had others. My wife's had an 
awful time trying to wash our clothes. The 
water will turn all sorts of colors and mix up 
like buttermilk every time she puts soap in 
it, and finally someone told her that she had 
to break the water. I've heard of breaking 
horses and colts and oxen, but I never heard 
of breaking water; but, by George, that's 
what we're having to do!" 



[Page 67 



Clje Crail tKljat iSeber Mas tlrabeleb 

As YOU drive from Topeka to the stone 
bridge, just before you enter the valley, 
you notice what may appear to be a road ex- 
tending eastward between two fences set about 
thirty feet apart. The way is rough and 
stony, and full of weeds and brush, and if 
you ask whether it is a laid-out road, you will 
be informed that it is, and that years ago road 
viewers went over it and estabhshed it as one 
of the public roads of Shawnee County. If 
you ask whether it was ever traveled, the 
answer will be, "no." And if you ask why it 
was laid out, this will be the explanation : 

Wilham Cartmill, a tall, vigorous, turbulent 
Irishman, owned the land to the north. 
George Franks, a hard-working, sturdy, hon- 
est, conservative Englishman owned the land 
to the south. They never agreed about any- 
thing. Franks was a church man, and loved 
peace and quiet. Stern necessity had taught 
him the ways of a pioneer. He could build a 

[Page 59 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



good log house without a nail or any other 
article that would cost money, and with very 
few tools beside his ax and broadax. Cartmill 
paid no attention to the church, and was always 
in a row of some kind. He had a good heart, 
but he was naturally full of devilment, and he 
enjoyed making trouble for Franks. He soon 
learned that Franks was afraid of him, or at 
least he treated Franks as though he were. 
The fact was, that the Englishman did not 
fear him, but simply wanted to avoid trouble 
with him ; but it was all the same to Cartmill, 
and gave him an excuse for making Franks all 
the trouble he could. He found Franks start- 
ing to build a fence one day along the line, 
and went out and ordered him off, and yelled 
after him as he went : 

"You know bloody well that the line's four 
hundred yards further south, and if I catch 
yez here any more I'll cut your heart out and 
set it up on a sharp rock." 

Of course, Franks was right about the line, 
but Cartmill quarreled with him until it be- 
came necessary to get a county surveyor to 
make a definite location and plant the corner- 

60] 



The Trail That Never Was Traveled 



stone. Franks then built a fence just two feet 
south of the Hne, and as soon as he finished it 
Cartmill hitched onto it. This gave Cartmill 
the use of the fence and two feet of the Franks 
land. Of course, Franks didn't like this, and 
he tried to find some legal way to get rid of 
the annoyance without bringing a direct suit 
against Cartmill, and so he petitioned for a 
road to be laid out. The neighbors helped 
him with it, although they all knew that the 
road never would be traveled, and thus it was 
that years ago there was established a laid- 
out road along the brow of the Wakarusa hills, 
running over gullies and bluffs where no one 
would or could travel. 

Cartmill used the lane for a calf pasture in 
the summer and a place to shoot rabbits in 
the winter, and always claimed that he had 
the best of the row. 

To this day the lane is a rendezvous for 
rabbit and quail, and as the country boys 
tramp through it they thank all the lucky 
stars for the row between the English and the 
Irish. 



[Page 61 



tirije Conversion of Cartmill 

THE Berry Creek Methodist church was a 
religious institution. It didn't pretend 
to have any other purpose nor function than 
to promote the getting of rehgion. There was 
no attempt to provide amusements or recrea- 
tion, nor to make the church organization a 
club or a cult of any kind or character. The 
preachers and the members simply preached 
the old-time religion and insisted that every 
human being must get religion or go to hell. 
They were not so particular as to whether you 
joined the church, although it was usually 
urged that persons having got religion would 
do so. However, as a protection to the church 
and to prevent cluttering up their records, it 
was always provided that no matter how 
earnestly one professed religion, he must re- 
main on probation for six months before being 
taken into the church. Experience showed 
that this was a wise provision, since many 
who professed religion did not remain stead- 

[Page 63 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



fast long enough to become members of the 
church, and therefore the church officials were 
not compelled to carry them upon their books 
(if they kept books) as members, nor to in- 
dulge in the humiliating process of putting 
them out of the church because they had be- 
come backsliders. 

It must be recorded that its ministers did 
not temporize with sin in any form, and that 
drinking, card-playing, dancing and other in- 
dulgences of worldly men and women were 
not classified as one being more sinful than 
the other, but all were condemned ; and the 
person seeking religion was urged to put the 
devil behind him, which meant that he must 
abandon all self-indulgence and worldly pleas- 
ure and dedicate his life to service and sacri- 
fice for good. Their ministers were sometimes 
embarrassed when called to preach the funeral 
of some person who had died in sin according 
to the doctrines of the church ; but they were 
usually more or less resourceful at such times, 
and without giving way one jot or one tittle, 
and without indulging in elasticity of faith, 
they would manage to give comfort to be- 



Page 6h] 



The Conversion of Cartmill 



reaved friends and relatives, at the same time 
warning all of the uncertainty of life and the 
necessity of preparation for death. 

The principal activity of the church con- 
sisted in holding a revival meeting once a 
year in the Berry Creek school-house, and 
during the winter of which this is written the 
meeting commenced early. Crops had ripened 
early in the fall, so that the corn was practically 
all shucked and in the crib by Thanksgiving 
time ; potatoes and other vegetables had been 
gathered and cared for, and apples stored 
away in cellars or sealed up in great holes 
made in the ground. The meeting started off 
well. For some reason a good attendance was 
present the first night, and the preacher clus- 
tered his sermon and exhortation around the 
inquiry, *' Where will you spend eternity.'^" 
It is not an exaggeration to say that during 
the next day hundreds of people, either directly 
or by grapevine-method, told others of the 
eloquence of the minister and of his earnest- 
ness, and of the fact that there seemed to be 
in the atmosphere of the meeting the presence 

[Page 65 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



of the Holy Spirit that stirred them all in a 
wonderful way. 

The weather was pleasant and the attend- 
ance at the meetings increased, as night after 
night the revival spirit animated those in at- 
tendance. After some days of good weather a 
rainy period set in, and this continued more 
than two weeks; but this did not halt the 
attendance nor dampen the fire that had been 
kindled at the meetings. Early in the evening 
the roads and trails would be full of persons 
afoot, on horseback, or in wagons, all happy 
and more or less noisy, making their way 
through the mud to the little school-house. 
The building would be crowded, and the win- 
dows thrown up so that persons standing on 
the outside under the eaves could hear and 
see all that was going on, and occasionally 
take part in the songs or exclamations which 
made up more or less of the service. 

John MacDonald was trying to teach school 
during the daytime in the building, but he 
was having a hard time of it. He was his 
own janitor, and when he would come to 
build a fire in the morning and find two or 

Page 66] 



The Conversion of Cartmill 



three inches of mud on the floor, and all of his 
kindling and ready fuel burned up, he would 
sometimes be exasperated. In fact, one even- 
ing at the meeting, among those who stood 
outside, it was reported that MacDonald had 
complained to the board, and a new convert 
expressed the sentiment of those present when 
he said : 

*'Hell, John's all right; but he's a damn 
Presbyterian, and can't be expected to know 
much about getting religion." 

Someone rebuked the speaker for using pro- 
fanity, since he was one of the converts ; and 
modifying his language, he said : 

"I'm durned if it ain't purty hard to quit 
swearing, but I'm doing the best I can, and I 
think if this meeting runs on another week 
I'll be all right." 

The meetings continued, and finally the 
rainy weather suddenly terminated, and the 
temperature went down lower and lower, until 
by Christmas time the thermometer showed 
zero weather, and day after day it was cold 
enough that sun-dogs followed the sun all day 
long. 

[Page 67 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



As the weather grew colder the meetings 
grew warmer. Practically everyone for miles 
around attended, and the most of them got 
religion. It was no unusual thing for awk- 
ward country lads who had never made a 
public address, to stand up and in eloquent 
though trembling voice profess their change 
of heart and their desire to do right, and with- 
out embarrassment exhort their friends to join 
them. Modest women who scorned unseemly 
conduct or notoriety would go up and down 
the little room urging those whom they knew 
to take advantage of the promises of God ; 
and if they did at times shout and cry out, or 
jump up and down, or throw themselves upon 
the floor or the bench used for an altar, it was 
all because of the exaltation of the hour and a 
part of their good intent and good purpose. 
A dance in the neighborhood was simply out 
of the question, and it would have been hard 
to find a playing-card left unburned ; and 
in their efforts to put away worldly things, 
many tobacco-soaked men gave up the use of 
the weed. One night a convert told of his 
experience in this behalf, and said he had had 

Page 68] 



The Conversion of Cartmill 



some awful dreams, and one was that he was 
sitting on a hill north of the Wakarusa Valley, 
and that there was a terrible drouth, on ac- 
count of which the river was dry, and that 
the devil came to him with a plug of tobacco 
that reached from him clear over to Carbon- 
dale, and that in his weakness he had chewed, 
and spit in the river, and that he had chewed 
the entire plug and had spit in the river until it 
run off as though there had been a terrible rain. 

The meeting kept going, and finally Dr. 
Taylor, who had been counted as an unbe- 
liever, came and got religion and helped in the 
exhortations. One night in urging the bene- 
fits of religion upon an audience, he pointed to 
George Franks, and said : 

"Look, what the religion of Christ has done 
for Brother Franks. He was a wife-beater 
and a drunkard " 

Just there Brother Franks interrupted him, 
and half arising from his seat, he said : 

** Brother, not a wife-beater." 

The Doctor corrected himself and went on 
with his illustration, which was just as good 
without the charge which was denied. 

[Page 69 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



John MacDonald, notwithstanding the in- 
cident hereinbefore related, became an at- 
tendant at the meeting, and more than once, 
in his conservative and humorous way, took 
part and showed his full appreciation of 
the spirit of reform and revival that pervaded 
the neighborhood, and his full sympathy with 
every honest effort to do good and make men 
lead better lives. And so they came from up 
and down the valley and everywhere, the rich 
and the poor, the good and the bad, the con- 
servative and the excitable, and all were 
melted together in religious effort. It is true 
that there was sometimes confusion because 
different persons would insist upon singing 
their favorite hymn at the same time ; but it 
did not seem out of the way when Mrs. 
Hughes, in recollection of earlier days in 
Wales, would sing, ''I've Reached the Land of 
Corn and Wine;" and an old Scotchman 
would start up "I'm Far Frae My Hame, and 
I'm Weary Aften Whiles;" and another 
would sing ''How Firm a Foundation Ye 
Saints of the Lord ;" and another, "Shall We 
Gather at the River;" and all Hable to be 

70] 



The Conversion of Cartviill 



interrupted by a grand old chap who would 
yell, rather than sing, "It's the Old Time Re- 
ligion and It's Good Enough for Me." 

It is not passing strange that many of the 
youngsters who attended the meeting simply 
considered the services as entertainment, al- 
though in later life in thinking it over they 
were able to understand that when men and 
women make up their minds to abandon sel- 
fish purposes and do right at all times and in 
all places they naturally become possessed of 
the spirit of happiness, of exaltation and 
praise that easily accounted for the wonderful 
services held during such a revival. 

One day little Tommy Cartmill went to the 
teacher and said : 

"I have lost my revolver somewhere about 
the school grounds, and if you are at church 
tonight I wish you would announce it so that 
if anyone finds it they will return it to me." 

MacDonald was amazed that a little chap 
of thirteen years would be carrying a re- 
volver, and after telling him what he thought 
about such practice, he said that he would 
undertake to find the lost weapon by making 

[Page 71 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



the announcement requested. That night the 
teacher made the announcement which he had 
promised, and this reminded those present 
that the old man Cartmill had not attended 
the meeting and was still out in the cold 
world of sin; and immediately many voices 
plead with the Lord that Cartmill might see 
the error of his ways, and that the Spirit 
might come down upon him, and that he 
might be saved. Whether because of the 
power of prayer or of the fact that his name 
had been mentioned at the meeting, it soon 
came about that Cartmill attended the serv- 
ices. He was a tall, strong, lanky Irishman, 
with a bushy head that looked as though it 
never had been combed, and his quarrels with 
Franks and other neighbors had made him 
more or less of a terror. He was entirely too 
large to use the ordinary school pupil's seat, 
and he therefore stood up near the door. He 
gave no indication of his attitude toward the 
meeting except to make a few scornful re- 
marks now and then on the outside, but about 
the third night in the midst of a glorious 
period of exhortation and song he came bolt- 

Page 72] 



The Conversion of Cartmill 



ing up the aisle like a mad buffalo ; but as he 
turned around it was seen that tears streamed 
down his face, and commencing in a broken 
way, he implored the forgiveness of all whom 
he had wronged, and begged the prayers and 
help of all that he might get religion and be 
saved. Many crowded around him as he 
talked, and prayed for him, when he finally 
threw himself over the altar. George Franks 
and others whom he had terrorized put their 
arms around him and held to him and prayed 
for him as though he were the most precious 
mortal on earth. Finally he announced that 
the light had come to him, and he stood up 
to testify. Among other things he confessed 
that he had wronged Brother Franks, and he 
said : 

"I have done more than any of yez know. 
I stole his plow, a new one, that he left in the 
field ; and I didn't stale it to kape it, but I 
stole it because of the divil that was in me ; 
and I threw it in the Wakarusa in the dape 
hole by the big sycamore tree." 

This and many other confessions he made. 
The meeting held till far in the night, and 



[Page 73 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



after it had broken up one could hear people 
on their way home talking loud of what a 
glorious meeting it had been, and an occa- 
sional voice would praise the Lord for his 
power to forgive and wipe out sin. The next 
day some sturdy youngsters cut the ice in the 
deep hole, where it was more than a foot 
thick, and hooked and grappled around in the 
water until they found the lost plow, and they 
pulled it out and carried it home to Franks. 
So it was that the confession was verified, and 
a real loss restored and made good by the in- 
fluence of religion. 

It matters not whether the church books 
ever showed that Cartmill remained steadfast 
until he became a member, but it must be 
recorded that he did get religion, and that 
his religion changed, influenced and made 
better his life, and that from that time for- 
ward no man in the whole community was 
less to be feared or was more helpful or con- 
siderate in his dealings or contact with his 
neighbors. 



Page 7^] 



a Jf ourtf) of 3ifulp ^peecl) 



A FEW of the neighbors held a meeting to 
arrange for a Fourth of July picnic that 
was to be held in the grove near the big spring 
that breaks through the rocky banks of the 
Wakarusa one and a half miles below the 
stone bridge, and they had quite a dispute 
over whether they would invite John Martin 
or Joseph G. Waters to make the speech. An 
old mossback Democrat insisted that they 
have Martin. He said that Martin was a real 
Jeffersonian Democrat, and knew more about 
what the Fourth of July was made for than 
anybody else. A couple of younger men in 
the crowd insisted on having Joe Waters. 
They said that Joe was a Republican sure 
enough, but not Republican enough to hurt, 
and that he made a stem-windin' good speech. 
After considerable wrangle it was decided to 
invite Joe, and he consented to make the 
talk. 

On the morning of the Fourth, along all the 

[Page 75 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



trails and roads people traveled, finding their 
way to the grove ; and just about noon Cap- 
tain Waters arrived with a livery team and 
buggy, with a negro boy driving; and he 
drove smashing and stomping in a reckless 
manner all around among the trees, almost 
running over some of the dinner baskets that 
were set about on the ground. The Captain 
took charge from the time he arrived. Every- 
thing that was done, he had to tell how to do 
it. One old woman had built a little fire be- 
tween a couple of rocks to make some coffee, 
and he went up to her and told her that it 
was just as fair to drink coffee on the Fourth 
of July as on Christmas, and that he knew 
more about making coffee than the man who 
invented it. And in spite of her protests he 
made the coffee, and, of course, was welcome 
to help drink it. 

After dinner, they backed a wagon up to an 
open place on the ground where some seats 
had been arranged, and Joe jumped in, and 
then reached for and pulled at the old man 
Kosier, who climbed up and called the crowd 
to order, made a few remarks on his own ac- 

Page 76] 



A Fourth of July Speech 



count, and then introduced and started off 
the Captain. 

Joe stretched up his arms and called loudly 
for everyone to draw near. He said that he 
proposed to ask some questions and find out 
some things before he decided whether he 
would make a speech to such a crowd. 'Tirst," 
he said, "I want to know why you call that 
man Big Aaron Coberly, and that one Little 
Aaron;" and as he spoke he pointed to 
Aaron, Senior, who weighed one hundred and 
forty pounds, and then to Aaron, Junior, who 
weighed two hundred and forty. An old lady's 
voice, cracked, but earnest, piped up : 

'*Big Aaron used to be the biggest — he was 
grown up when little Aaron was a baby." 

"Fair enough," said Joe; and everybody 
laughed. 

*' Another thing," said Joe, "I want to know 
whether you people are up on figures or 
whether you are a bunch of joshers. I heard 
Dick Disney ask Coker what he would take 
for his lower eighty, and Coker said he would 
take sixteen hundred dollars for it. Dick 
said he'd be damned if he'd give it — he would 

[Page 77 



Tales and Trails of Waharusa 



give twenty dollars per acre and no more. 
Coker told him to go to hell ; and just then 
Wash Berry, Bill Cartmill and a half a dozen 
others crowded around and told them they 
ought to compromise. This talk was pulled 
off within ten feet of me," said Joe in a loud 
voice, "and I want to know if you think you 
can play horse with me, or is it possible you're 
all crazy in your arithmetic?" 

A youngster yelled, *'It's you 'at's crazy," 
and ran off through the woods. 

After several further inquiries of this char- 
acter the Captain said he was satisfied, and 
would go on with his talk. 

It was a great day for Joe, and the people 
too ; and there are some of them now who 
remember different portions of his speech, 
and especially one part that was more or less 
prophetic of the destiny of our country and 
of the fact that our soldiers might have to 
serve across the seas. This part was as fol- 
lows : 

*'If I see the flag in unending line flung high up the 
city's wall, shining and shimmering all day long, it is 
my flag, bless God! If far out on the bleak desert, 

Page 78] 



A Fourth of July Speech 



parched, barren and desolate, I see it fluff and flutter 
about the white adobe walls of the fort, it is my flag. 
If far at sea beneath the unclouded sky, the sun sil- 
vering the endless billows, it rises out of the eternal 
depths in its rippling folds, my blood may chill, my 
eyes may fill, my heart may still, for it is my flag that 
crests the ocean. If in a strange and alien land, alone, 
solitary and homesick, the pomp of royalty on every 
hand, suddenly there should burst in view, way up the 
shaded avenue, the glory, red and white and blue, oh, 
for the Kaiser and his crown, on me and mine to then 
look down, I'd lift my head and proudly say, 'That is 
my flag you see today, and isn't it a dandy, eh?' And 
I would tell his ermined queen, of all the heavens and 
earth between, it is the grandest thing that flies, o'er 
land or sea, beneath the skies! And as the years may 
go, as falls the snow, as flowers may blow, come weal 
or woe, that banner is my flag, I know." 

At the close of the day, the chairman of 
the committee was heard to remark : 

"Well, considerin' as how Joe wouldn't 
take any pay, and insisted on paying for the 
livery horses himself, and then bought out 
the stand of all the candy and cigars and give 
it all away among the crowd — I guess we got 
our money's worth." 



[Page 70 



^i)t ^fjantom Jf isifjerman anb 0t\)tv 



ONE morning in early June a ten-year-old 
lad, having been given a half-holiday, 
dug a fine mess of luscious worms, put them in 
a tin can with plenty of good dirt, and started 
off up Berry Creek to fish for bullheads and 
sunfish. He went through the papaw patch 
and cut a nice long pole, and took time to fix 
his line on it in good shape, and to see that 
his cork, sinker, and hook were all right. He 
then went on through the woods, crossed the 
big ravines, and climbed around the rocky 
cliffs, making his way to the spot designated 
among the boys as the "bullhead hole." This 
was and is the best place on earth to fish for 
bullheads, and the boy knew it, and it was 
there he wanted to commence the day's 
sport. Finally he climbed over the last ledge, 
forced his way through the brush and came 
in sight of his favorite place, and, to his 
astonishment, he found an aged, peculiar- 

[Page SI 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



looking man sitting under the old sycamore 
tree in the very spot where he had planned to 
be. He walked slowly up to a place as near 
the old man as good manners would permit, 
unwound his line and put on a good lively 
worm and commenced. 

The old man paid no attention to him what- 
ever, and, on watching him closely, the boy 
noticed that he was fishing for minnows with 
a pin-hook fastened to a thread, and this tied 
to a crooked stick. He put the minnows he 
caught into a tin bucket which was sitting 
at his feet, partially full of water. As soon 
as the boy noticed what he was doing, he set 
his pole and went up to him and offered to 
take off his shirt and help him seine for min- 
nows with it. The old man looked up and 
said : 

**Boy, I wouldn't fish with minnows caught 
with the best seine on earth. Your shirt 
wouldn't be much account as a seine ; and 
anyway, they're never big enough. I am on 
my way to Wakarusa, and I want some good, 
strong, live minnows. A man who fishes with 
seined minnows is no account. More than 



Page 



The Phantom Fisherman 



that, you have no business to get your shirt 
wet. You tend to your fishin' and I'll tend 
to mine. Andrew Jackson said he knew a 
man who got rich tending to his own business." 

This was a good deal of a bluff for the boy, 
and he proceeded as had been suggested, and 
''tended to his own business." It was a good 
morning for bullheads, and he soon got their 
range and commenced catching them. In 
fact, they were biting so well that he didn't 
stop to string any of those he caught, but 
threw them back on the bank; and just to 
see to it that the stranger did not forget he 
was there, he usually threw them toward the 
foot of the sycamore tree. 

After a while the old man took his thread 
off the crooked stick and wound it up, poured 
most of the water off his minnows, and then 
filled the bucket again with fresh water, 
splashing it in with his hand so that it would 
be as full of oxygen as possible ; and then he 
took out an old pipe and filled it, and as he 
commenced to smoke he looked around at 
the ground, spotted with wriggling bullheads 
and sunfish, and for the boy, who had ex- 

[Page 83 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



perienced a lull in his activities long enough 
to allow him to commence to pick up and 
string the fish he had caught. 

The boy looked at him, and he brightened 
up and said : 

''Kid, you're having a good time, and I 
don't blame you. I am going down to Wa- 
karusa to fish for big fish, but, after all, you've 
got more sense than I. The bullhead is the 
safest and surest fish for meat, and he's not 
bad sport either, because he usually bites like 
he meant business, although he may be a 
little slow. The bullhead is a good deal like 
the rabbit in one way — he's sure food. There's 
more rabbit meat on foot in Kansas than 
there is beef or pork, and it's all good. The 
buffalo was all right in his time, but even he 
didn't come up to the rabbit. The bullhead 
reminds me of the rabbit, and the rabbit re- 
minds me of the bullhead." 

The old man stopped talking, and acted as 
though he were about to start off, when the 
boy asked him where he was going on the 
Wakarusa to fish, and he said : 

''I don't know just where I'll wind up. I 



Page SJ^] 



The Phantom Fisherman 



have fished in every hole in Wakarusa from 
way above the Wakarusa falls down stream 
nearly to Lawrence, and sometimes I go to 
one place and sometimes to another. I've 
fished for bullheads, too, and for sunfish, in 
every place that the water is deep enough 
from the place where Berry Creek starts, over 
in the coal banks by Carbondale, down to the 
Sac and Fox spring and all along Lynn Creek, 
especially in the part that's full of boulders 
and little round pebbles, with here and there 
a riffle made by a broken flat rock. And boy, 
I want to tell you something — some days you 
can catch fish like you've been catching 'em 
this morning, and some days you can't. I've 
seen days so dull that even the bite of a craw- 
fish was welcome." 

The old man started off, and then came 
back and took the boy by the shoulder and 
almost shook him as he said : 

"Don't tell anyone that you saw me. It's 
nobody's business." And then he went 
away. 

The boy was not at all afraid, although the 
man was a total stranger, and looked and 



[Page 85 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



acted very queer. The next day he told Joe 
Coberly about meeting him, and Joe said : 

'*That old cuss is not real. He's around 
here every once in a while, and always has 
been. Nobody knows where he lives nor 
where he comes from or goes to. He must 
have been in a good humor or you wouldn't 
have caught so many fish, because he can 
give you good luck or bad luck ; and there's 
always something strange happenin' when 
you hear of him around. Last night some- 
thing had one of my horses out and run him 
nearly to death ; his mane was all tied in 
knots this morning, and he was wringin' wet 
with sweat when I went into the barn ; and 
the barn doors were all fastened just as I had 
left them, too. You never can tell what's 
goin' to happen when that old devil's pre- 
tendin' to fish up and down the creek." 

The boy told the story to a number of 
people, and soon found that practically all of 
the old-timers thought just the same as did 
Joe Coberly, and that they believed that there 
was something mysterious and unreal about 
the fisherman he met at the bullhead hole. 



Page 



The Phantom Fisherman 



II. 

The boy treasured up what had been told 
hmi about the ghost fisherman, and although 
he had been taught at home that there were 
no ghosts, every story of that nature inter- 
ested him. One night he was at the home of 
Uncle Bill Matney. It was about ten o'clock, 
and they w^ere all seated around the big fire 
that was roaring in the fireplace. Uncle Bill 
was playing "Natchez Under the Hill" on 
the fiddle, w^hen suddenly they heard a horse 
coming on a dead run over the rocky road 
that led tow^ard the house. The fiddle stopped, 
and everybody listened, and Uncle Bill said : 

"That must be Little Jim Lynn. Nobody 
else is damn fool enough to ride like that." 

Pretty soon the horse stopped by the side 
of the house, and they could all hear the sad- 
dle hit the ground, and then the bridle, after 
w^hich the horse trotted away and Little Jim 
stalked into the house. As he pulled off his 
gloves and threw them in a corner. Uncle Bill 
said : 

"What the hell's the matter, Jim.^" 

[Page 87 



Tales and Trails of Waharusa 



And Jim said : 

''O, nothing, only a damn ghost — saw him 
down on the bluff by Mark Young's corner." 

Jim was white as death, and everybody lis- 
tened, but he didn't say anything more until 
Uncle Bill said : 

'*War he beckonin', Jim?" 

And Jim said : 

"No, he warn't beckonin', but he was there 
just the same." 

Uncle Bill tuned up his fiddle, and before 
he resumed playing, said : 

'* Well, if he warn't beckonin' it's all right." 

Just at that point the boy broke in to in- 
quire what difference it made whether the 
ghost was beckoning, and two or three ex- 
plained to him that if a ghost beckoned to you 
that someone in your family would die within 
a year. 



Page 88\ 



The Phantom Fisherman 



III. 

The boy was just skeptic enough to have 
plenty of fun Hstening to ghost stories by 
people who believed or half way believed 
them ; and it became a habit of his to bring 
up the subject in talking with different people, 
and listen to their ghost stories if any might 
be provoked. 

One spring he heard a ghost story that 
clung to him, and as he grew older and older 
the ghost in the story seemed more real. It 
was during the spring roundup of cattle, and 
he and an old Westerner had been riding and 
working together for a number of days cut- 
ting out and separating cattle, and taking 
some to one range and some to another, when, 
after a long day's ride over the hills of Wa- 
baunsee County, they found that they were 
not able to reach home, and made a camp at 
Wakarusa falls. They boiled some coffee and 
fried some salt meat, and this, together with 
some bread and some hard-boiled eggs, made 
a good supper. Afterwards they lay down 
with their saddles for pillows and commenced 

[Page 60 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



the usual process of talking one another to 
sleep. Looking up at the stars and out at 
their dying fire, the boy thought of the phan- 
tom fisherman and other ghosts, and asked 
the old ranger what he knew about such. 
The old fellow stretched out on the ground, 
and reaching over took hold of the boy, as he 
said : 

"Kid, I guess I've seen as many ghosts as 
anybody, but there's one that I never forget, 
and it's always comin' back to me. Years 
ago, when I wasn't any older than you, way 
back in York State, I coaxed my father and 
mother ever so many times to let me come 
out West. We had some folks living out this 
way, and from the letters they wrote, I was 
crazy to come out here. They didn't want 
me to come, and said I ought to go to school, 
and tried to make me go to school ; but I 
wouldn't do any good in school nor at any- 
thing else, and once or twice I run away from 
home, and they caught me and brought me 
back. One day my mother called me into the 
house, and I noticed that my father was sit- 
ting down at the table and that there was a 

Page 90] 



The Phantom Fisherman 



chair near his where she had been sitting. 
She asked me to sit down, and she pulled up 
another chair, and then she said : 'Jack, we've 
been talking about you, and we know that you 
want to go out West, and that you want to 
go so bad that you're not doin' any good here. 
Your Paw and I have talked it over, and 
thought it over, and prayed over it, and we 
think that maybe it would be best for you to 
go, and we're goin' to give you what we can 
spare and let you strike out.' We hadn't had 
a letter from the folks in the West for a long 
time, but we hunted up the old address, and 
Mother tied up a big bundle of clothes for me, 
and they gave me a railroad ticket and nine 
dollars and fifty cents, which w^as all the 
money they had in the house. On the day I 
left I started for the station on foot, and 
looked back many times because Father and 
Mother both were hanging over the gate 
watching me go. I don't know how many 
times I looked back. Kid, but I do know that 
I looked back enough that the looks of them 
has been with me all these years ; and lots 
and lots of times it seems to me that I can 

[Page 91 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



see the old man as he held up his hand and 
yelled 'Goodbye, boy, goodbye!' and Ma right 
by his side. It may be that there ain't any 
real ghosts for some people, but them old 
faces are real when they come back to me. 
It's more than thirty years, and ever so long 
I thought I'd go back and see them some day, 
and I used to write them that I would, but I 
never did ; and they're both gone now. Their 
ghost is all I have, and I kind o' like it, and 
wouldn't trade it off for anything in the 
world." 

As the story ended the stars gradually went 
out for the boy, and he thought no more of 
ghosts until morning. Since then, he has ac- 
cumulated quite a number of ghosts of his 
own of the same kind and character as the 
ones that followed the old cattleman, all born 
of the grief of separation, and they are all real 
to him and have become part of his life. 



Page 



^n Snbian Cfjristmas; 

(A legend of the camp by the spring.) 

ON Christmas night the Indian camp was 
a noisy place. The fires were burning 
brightly in every tepee, and shouts and 
laughter told of the good time that was being 
had by everyone as a part of the celebration 
that the old French priest had taught them 
to have. 

Outside the wind was blowing cold, with 
skiffs of snow. A strange boy wandered into 
the camp. He stopped at the tent of the 
chief and asked that he be admitted and given 
food and allowed to get warm. The chief 
drove him away. He went to the tent of 
Shining Star and tried to be admitted, but 
Shining Star grunted, and his boys drove him 
away with whips. He then went to many of 
the tents, including those of Eagle Eye and 
Black Feather, but none would receive him, 
and at one they set a dog upon him. His feet 
were bare, and tears were frozen on his cheeks. 

[Page 93 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



He was about to leave the camp, when he 
noticed a small tepee made of bearskin off by 
itself. He walked slowly to it, and quietly 
peeped in. Inside he saw the deformed In- 
dian, who was known everywhere by the name 
of Broken Back. His squaw sat near him, 
preparing a scanty meal for them and their 
children. The children were playing on the 
ground, but were watching their mother 
closely, for they were hungry. The fire was 
low, and the boy started to turn away, and 
broke a twig that lay on the ground. 

Broken Back ran out and stopped him as 
he was about to turn away. 

"What do you want?" he said. 

The boy commenced to cry. 

*'I am so cold and hungry," he said, *'and 
I have been to all the tents, and they will not 
let me in." 

Then Broken Back took him by the hand 
and led him into the tent, and they divided 
the food with him, and built up the fire until 
he became warm and happy. They urged him 
to stay all night and until the storm was over. 

So he sat on the ground near the fire and 



An Indian Christmas 



talked and played with the children until it 
was time to go to sleep. 

Then he stood up, and they all noticed that 
he was tall, and as they looked they saw that 
he was a man instead of a boy. His clothes 
were good, and over his shoulder hung a 
beautiful blanket, and over his head was a 
bonnet with feathers of strange birds upon it. 
As they looked, he reached out his hand and 
said : 

"Broken Back, you have been good to a 
poor, cold and hungry boy. You and all of 
yours shall have plenty." 

And Broken Back stood up ; and he was 
deformed no more, but was large and strong 
and well, and his squaw stood by his side, 
and both were dressed in the best of Indian 
clothes. The children jumped about with joy, 
as they noticed that they were at once sup- 
plied with many things that they had always 
wanted. 

"Broken Back," he said, "you shall be 
chief of your tribe. And all of your people 
shall love and respect and honor you. And 

[Page 05 



Tales and Trails of Wakarusa 



your name shall be Broken Back no longer, 
but shall be Holy Mountain." 

And as they talked, all of the Indians of the 
tribe came marching about his tent shouting 
in gladness, "Great is Holy Mountain, our 
chief, forever." 

As they shouted, he disappeared, and they 
saw him no more. 

The next day the good priest came to the 
camp, and they told him what had happened, 
and he said, '*It was Jesus." 



Pane m] 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



If! III! 



016 089 009 



